Heitaro Kimura

Heitaro Kimura (28 September 1888-23 December 1948) was a General of the Imperial Japanese Army who commanded the Burma Area Army from 1944 to 1945 during World War II.

Biography
Heitaro Kimura was born on 28 September 1888 in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. Kimura served in the Imperial Japanese Army during the Siberian Intervention in the Russian Civil War, and from 1940 to 1941 he served as Chief-of-Staff of the Kwantung Army in Manchukuo. In late 1944, Kimura took command of the Burma Area Army after Masakazu Kawabe was relieved following the Battle of Imphal, but the Allied Powers had air superiority and the Japanese were facing pressure on all fronts. Kimura switched to defensive warfare after the January-March 1945 Battle of Meiktila and Mandalay, and he decided to withdraw from Rangoon rather than hold it to the last man. Kimura was still reorganizing his forces at the time of the surrender of Japan in September 1945, and after the war he was accused of failing to prevent atrocities like the Death Railway, which was built a year before he even arrived in Burma. On 23 December 1948, he was hanged at Sugamo Prison for war crimes.